


Wendigo Syndrome

by BlackRose



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 02:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3711949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackRose/pseuds/BlackRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in response to a kinkmeme prompt, 'Hannibal needs to eat human meat'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lecter had been in Chilton's care less than two weeks when his kidneys failed. 

The nurses were wary, at first---the last time an inmate had a medical emergency one of their own was killed--but when he stopped responding coherently to the questions Chilton puts to him, instead aimlessly scratching at the rash forming on his neck and back and struggling to pull his velcro slippers off over swollen feet, it became obvious he was truly in a bad way. They found him slumped over beside the one-piece toilet panting like a racehorse and completely unresponsive. His skin was cold; the only pulse they could find was a panicky flutter.

Three armed guards followed the gurney to the hospital wing, and then stood watch as the staff hooked up a variety of monitors. Lecter moved only to writhe in pain, moaning that he had to piss and couldn't. It soon became clear that the dark stain on the crotch of his prison uniform was blood. They got bags of fluid in him but he slipped under and stayed there. When the catheter bag remained half-full of cola-colored sludge three hours later, someone grudgingly alerted Chilton.

The BSHCI lacked the needed facilities for CAT scans and abdominal ultrasound; reluctantly the decision was made to move him to nearby Johns Hopkins. Arrangements were made for a private room under heavy guard. The tests done, more fluids administered, and the moment the results came back the nephrologist pulled Chilton aside.

"You've got a serious problem on your hands here, Doctor. And I don't say that lightly. His organs are failing in a way I've seen exactly once before."

Chilton scrubbed at his jaw, glanced back at the curtain now being drawn around the bed. A respiratory therapist was intubating Lecter, who was still as responsive as a sack of straw and now struggling to breathe on his own. A heavy cart of dialysis equipment was at the ready. 

"What's your diagnosis?"

"Autoimmune glomerular disease. In this case, Bader Nephritis. Basically, he's become violently allergic to specific proteins, to the point that his body's started shutting down rather than even try filtering them out. In the one previous case I'd seen before it was linked to diet. What've you been feeding 'im, Chilton?"

Chilton paused, cagy. How much did the doctor know about this particular patient?

"Just the usual. This morning was oatmeal, toast and coffee; dinner yesterday I believe was fried chicken, I seem to recall we had sausage and waffles yesterday morning. Why?"

The doctor nodded in a way Chilton didn't like.

"So your proteins, they all came from, uh, _conventional sources_?"

Frederick's insides chilled. He hoped it didn't show outwardly.

"What are you implying?"

Glancing over to see if any of the nursing staff might overhear, the doctor leaned in.

"Doctor, this Bader's disease---it's also called Wendigo Syndrome. Named for the mythological beast; they look like corpses with antlers growin' out of their heads. They're...well. They're cannibalistic, Doctor. You become a Wendigo by killing and consuming human flesh."

Chilton bit down a curse as the doctor added, "That other case I saw? Young lady down in Georgia; she'd been raised in this murder-cult. Fed her human every night 'till she was rescued. She got sent to our hospital, seemed to be recoverin' fine----but then, just like your man in there, suddenly went into a sharp decline. Organ failure left'n'right, infections just wiping her out. She couldn't cope; she died less than a week later."

He chewed his lip, shaking his head.

"I....I was younger then, and foolish---so without my attendings knowing, I nicked some surgical leavings--scraps from around a leg-stump, I believe--and got them mixed into her food. Damnedest thing; she improved right away! I thought she was going to be all right. But that one occasion was the only time I was able to get her human flesh---and she died, horribly."

Chilton barked out an uncontrollable laugh at the sheer irony of it. A serial killer and cannibal, actually physically needing to eat human meat to stay alive! Of course this would happen! And it wasn't as if he had a choice, either---after the incident with Gideon, the last thing his hospital needed was another recorded inmate death. One might be explained away as an accident and a truly tragic circumstance. Two in quick succession, that started to look like a pattern.

"So you're saying, that I need to be feeding my patient human parts or he'll die."

"That's about the shape of it, yes."


	2. Chapter 2

"You knew this would happen, didn't you?"

The pulse-oximeter's steady beep was the only response; Lecter was still sedated, his face relaxed in sleep. A bag and internal catheter drained dialysis solution into his body, the small blood vessels in his abdomen doing the work of his damaged kidneys. 

"You son of a bitch, you knew and you didn't tell anyone--"

"You'd have figured it out, Frederick."

Chilton started---Lecter had spoken without opening his eyes, and he'd been lying so still it was impossible to tell he was awake. He spoke blurrily, the sedatives apparently not entirely worn off yet.

"What, when you went into circulatory collapse? If that particular doctor hadn't been there--"

"I knew he would be. We were not....colleagues, but we worked some of the same rounds, in the past. For what it's worth, he doesn't know....what I am."

Chilton laughed harshly, drawing up a chair by the bed.

"A serial-murdering sociopath? Understandable that you'd keep that to yourself."

Lecter's eyes stayed closed, but his lips quirked in what might have been meant as a smile. 

"The flesh-eating. It's always been that way, you know. Ever since I can recall."

Despite himself, Chilton was intrigued, and leaned in a bit. Think of the knowledge to be gained here! The fame that would come with being the first psychiatrist to whom the infamous cannibal had bared his black, festering soul, and the insight to be had into the creation of a monster! 

"How old were you, the first time?"

Suddenly Lecter's eyes opened, and Chilton lurched back with a startled yelp. They were brown, very deep-colored, but the low light pooled and glinted in them to turn their color very much like warm blood. 

"Seven. I was seven years old."


	3. Chapter 3

Lecter smiled thinly---an exhausted ghost of his usual gentility. 

"I had a sister, once. She was born the winter I turned three. Her name was....Mischa, and mother and father were both charmed at once. Everyone was----that was her magic. She could make anyone love her with the least of gestures."

His eyes slid shut again, an expression of pain briefly etching his features. 

"Then one fall there began to be chaos--fighting near the borders, soldiers in the streets. Mother and father sheltered us from it as best they could, but in the end we were driven from our home. Father died on the journey--robbers fell on our little caravan and slaughtered him, but mother got us away. We fled to a remote little hunting shack in the forest, where we wintered in the cold. One day mother went to go and collect mushrooms, as usual, and set traps for foxes and hares. She never came home. The same defectors---cowards wearing stolen uniforms---who had killed her, found us. "

His jaw twitched, and he looked back at Chilton as if gazing up out of a deep well.

"I was too small to protect her. The beasts, they were starving and a small, rosy-cheeked little girl made delightful meat to them. I believe they meant to kill me as well, but sickness prevailed. They coughed themselves to death before they could pick her carcass clean. It sickened me to do it, but....she was meat by then. I buried the remains and her copper bracelet. From there I remember little else until the orphanage---an uncle managed to track me down; he adopted me and brought me into his home. It was ingrained by then--the worst bullies I would cause to disappear in the night. Who would even know? It was an overcrowded boys' home full of mostly abandoned starvelings no one wanted. One less here and there could be easily overlooked."

Chilton shifted in his chair. 

"How did you manage to kill without getting caught? I mean, did no one ever notice the corpses, or...?"

"I lured them away at night. The oldest ones, they had certain.... _inclinations_ towards the younger, weaker boys. I would let on I was ready and willing. We would go into the cellar of the place---it was an ancient fortress, commandeered by the Soviets--where there was a sort of a dungeon in the floor. It was a very deep pit meant both as a latrine, and to house prisoners. Any weapon would do---a broken shard of mirror, an old scythe, even once an old set of leather horse-reins. I would do the killing over the dungeon, so the blood would fall into it, take my fill from the body and then tip it into the darkness. "

Lecter's smile turned wicked; his eyeteeth suddenly seemed brutally sharp.

"There must be....thirty, forty little skeletons in that pit. In the morning, the empty bed would be met with shrugs. 'Must have run away; boys do that at that age'." 

Chilton sat back, digesting this information. Not for the first time he wished he'd brought a tape recorder. 

"Have you ever told anyone else this?"

Lecter shook his head.

"Not before today. Lucky you."


End file.
